Nicholas Gerard-Larson, a senior on the 2009 Milwaukee men's soccer team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website. Today is his ninth blog entry.
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This week has been windier than almost any I can recollect. I’m talking about some serious gales, not the usual wimpy 20 miles-per-hour headwinds. Serious gusts whip up loose debris and fallen leaves, never in one consistent effort, but instead in vast desultory efforts of momentous natural power. As I biked back to my house one night I was nearly committed airborne by the whirling twisters emerging around me. I started humming the Wicked Witch of the West’s song in mock tribute to the Wizard of Oz, hoping to avoid a falling house and a descending pack of flying monkeys. I could almost hear the wind whisper, “I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog too.” Needless to say, I made it home without any red slippers.
Saturday marked my 22nd year on earth and I feel it’s appropriate to share a few trivial insights. Ironically, Brett Favre turned 40 on the same day. Looking back, that makes him 18 the day I gasped my first breath. I wonder how he celebrated becoming an adult the very day I emerged into this chaotic universe. Some superficial research brings up an interesting story. Favre gained the starting position at Southern Mississippi in mid-September of 1987, as a 17-year-old freshman. He had assumed he’d be redshirting and the night before the game got excessively drunk. Despite vomiting as he ran out onto the field Favre led his team to a come-from-behind victory over Tulane, securing his position. A few weeks later on October 10th, his 18th birthday and my beginning, Favre lost handily to number four Florida State. All this information was taken out of an article by Gary D’Amato called “Life of the Party,” and can be accessed on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website.
It was an exciting day for sports, back in 1987, as the Minnesota Twins played their third game in the American League Championship Series against the Detroit Tigers. They lost the game on the 10th, but won the rest of their games to advance and eventually win the World Series. I’m told that my father and other family members occasionally peeked out of the delivery room to check the score, something my mother would hold against them for years to come.
Saturday also featured our only game of the week with us hosting the Loyola Ramblers at home. The temperature had been dropping consistently throughout the week and at game time the thermometer hovered around a cool forty degrees. Most of our players sported long sleeve under armor shirts and gloves to combat the cold. As a native Minnesotan from Duluth, a port on Lake Superior several hours south of Thunder Bay, Canada, I’ve been unusually trained in cold weather tactics, so the conditions on Saturday seemed subjectively frivolous. The only real concern around this time of year, when the air turns cool and dry, is the impact it has on one’s breathing. Extensive exposure to the late fall and early winter air, especially for the first time during that particular season, brings chest aches and rattling, painful coughs. This generally goes away after training a few times in these conditions and the gradual drop of temperature during the week succeeded in tempering most of these traditional weather-induced ailments.
We started the game with intensity and excitement, gaining a couple of very strong chances in the first ten to fifteen minutes. We were rewarded for our hard work around the twenty-minute mark when (Andrew) Wiedebach slipped a shot by the Loyola goalie to put us up 1-0. We maintained good pressure for most of the half, excluding the last ten minutes, where we allowed a Loyola free kick to be re-directed into our goal, leveling the game at 1-1.
At half time I noticed that my knees had stiffened far more drastically than normal. Rejecting the urge to blame this on my recently achieved milestone in age, I concluded that the cold weather had in fact made its mark on my body. In such temperatures it is imperative to bundle up whenever one is idle and then properly warm-up the body again before resuming athletic activity. Appropriately, I indulged in these practices before the start of the second half and felt confident my body would hold up for another forty-five minutes.
We resurged at the onset of the second half, pushing hard to gain the go-ahead goal that had been equalized in the first. The situation arose in a little over five minutes into the half as (Cody) Banks flicked a header into the net to put us in the driver’s seat once again. Despite several harrowing moments in our defensive third we kept the lead and achieved our second straight conference victory. We aptly celebrated with the traditional team anthems in the showers. A full entourage of family members greeted me after the game and helped me finish off an excellent birthday with a succulent dinner of filet mignon at the Mason Street Grill.
